Congratulations to recent fourth year ITB Creative Digital Media student Carl O’Donovan who’s film ‘Rapto’ won the best student film at the 2016 Fingal film festival. Rapto is a short thriller drama which tells the story of two brothers and how they both cope with the recent death of their mother.

Fingal Film Festival was established in 2012 to provide a platform for local, national and international emerging filmmakers, offering encouragement and promotion of new work. The Festival connects emerging voices in film with industry experts and independent creative film makers from around the world.

CDM Lecturer Daniel McSweeney was successful in a joint application for funding to the National Forum for Teaching and Learning. The project entitled ‘An ePortfolio strategy to enhance student learning, assessment and staff professional development’ is a partnership between Dublin Institute of Technology, Institute of Technology, Blanchardstown, Institute of Technology Tallaght and Hibernia College. The project seeks to foster new ways to encourage academic staff to reap the benefits of ePortfolios and should completed in July 2016.

CDM lecturer Hugh Rodgers directed the critically acclaimed ‘The Story of Yes’, a 1 hour documentary for RTE which aired on Monday May 23rd 2016. The documentary was shown to mark the first anniversary of the Marriage Referendum. The documentary received glowing reviews from several leading media publications and was well received by social media.

While following a Lean UX methodology, fourth year CDM students worked with the Linc-based New Frontiers start-up UniTuition throughout the duration of the semester on the design of a bespoke mobile app which links third level students with qualified tutors. Initial project definition with the client preceded research techniques & analysis, collaborative prototyping through to interaction design and testing.

Fingal Film Festival is now open for the following film submissions in Animation – Feature – Short – Student – Documentary – Scannan Gaeilge Is Fearr – International – 1916 films related.

The fifth instalment of Fingal Film Festival’s annual event, which will take place inMovies@swords, Pavilions Centre, Swords, Co Dublin, Ireland from 30th Sept – 2nd nd Oct 2016. Our 2015 event saw bigger screening and workshop attendances, proving that the Fingal Film Festival is the best Independent Festival to have your work seen by large audiences and is a fantastic platform for emerging filmmakers from Ireland and abroad” says Liz Kenny, the Festivals Managing Director. “Our focus for 2016 is to create a Festival that is diverse in content, offering and interactive experience with filmmakers and cinema goers alike during next year’s event” says Creative Director Dave Byrne, “A challenge I and the team are looking forward to”.

As part of the centenary celebrations in 2016, the festival will be dedicating a slot in the schedule for all subjects relating to the 1916 Rising. Any filmmakers creating content in any of the mediums screened at the festival is encouraged to submit for possible inclusion in the Fingal Film Festival 2016.

Outstanding Achievement in Media Award – (Director/Writer/Producer/DOP/Journalist) This award will be given to any filmmaker who breaks new ground in any of the categories or creates a new way of storytelling.

Continual Assessment for the second year Website Design 1 module followed a website design life-cycle, giving students an opportunity to plan, design and develop an online presence for the newly established Final Community Enterprise Hub with the assistance of Paul Murgatroyd, Operations Manager at BASE Enterprise Centre, Dublin 15. Following an initial scoping process, students moved onto functional specification, content design, through to prototyping, visual design, development and testing stages. Following a review of completed sites; CDM Year 2 student Aishling Smith’s responsive submission was chosen to represent the organisation online @ http://fingalceh.ie/